She was drinking chamomile tea, I could already smell it from a distance. My mother stood by the counter with a teacup in front of her. I stepped into the kitchen and greeted her, but she didn’t reply. The odd smile on her face, some sort of idiotic grin, scared me to death. Her gaze, senseless and emotionless, was fixed on one spot, and I felt a knot forming in my throat. I called to her, but she didn’t react. Her hand rested on the mug, but she wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t move, and I got furious, since it was all her fault, everything; that I was there, that I was alive, that she killed my toy, killed my childhood, and now she couldn’t even say Good morning! Something snapped inside me, and I did the unimaginable. I stepped up to her and shook her as if I were shaking a tree to make its crop fall down.

My mother’s teeth fell out of her mouth, her glass eyes dropped and clattered onto the counter. Her skin opened up because there was no stitching to hold her together, her hair fell off her head.

Her body unraveled, and there was nothing left in my hands but a handful of cotton wool.

Return to the Midnight School

Return to the Midnight School

I live in a village where women usually give birth sitting in a pit. The families who respect this tradition take the mother out to the fields, dig a hole for her, and let her push the baby out into the pit. They lift the baby out of the dirt. They wash it and then bury the pit, its contents along with it.

If the baby is stillborn, they bury it as well. No need to prolong the mourning. It’s just meat, and it goes where every other piece of meat does, sooner or later. Under the ground.

If you walk through the village at night you might see the flames of a bonfire out in the fields, a good distance away from the houses – chances are that someone is giving birth. You might spare a thought for the baby that’s coming into our world from its own. From the midnight school.